BRI and Southeast Asia

One Belt, Many Roads: Investigating China’s Foreign Investment and Land-use Impacts in Southeast Asia

“…FDI can also dramatically shape urban land use. The Cambodian town of Sihanoukville, widely acknowledged as the "poster child" of Sino-Cambodian cooperation and a BRI-led Special Economic Zone (Rana & Ji, 2020), the site of Cambodia's only deep-water port and marks the starting point of a new Chinese-funded expressway to Phnom Penh. This area has seen a 200 percent increase in tourism and investment, through projects including condos and casinos, that cater largely to tourists, rather than to locals, for whom gambling is illegal (Ellis-Peterson, 2018;Retka, 2018).…”

The Geopolitics of Vaccine Diplomacy: Navigating Sinojapanese Competition in Southeast Asia

“…According to the available literature, China, and Southeast Asian countries have gained prominence for the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and "Maritime Silk Route of 21 st century" under BRI (Sharifli, 2020); the running BRI investment projects (Yan, 2018); claimed "nine-dash lines", disputed islands and "Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ)" in the South China Sea (Deutsche Welle, 2021a); countering US's "Rebalancing to Asia" and Japan's FOIP (Kuik, 2021). On the contrary, for Japan, the region has become vital to promote its FOIP vision; QUAD forum to support FOIP objectives (JMOD, 2020;Koga, 2019); increasing infrastructure (Pajon, 2019) and megabanks' investments (Rosario & Sun, 2019); and "soft-balancing" of Chinese influence and power asymmetry in the South China Sea (Pajon, 2019).…”

“…In Southeast Asia, China advances to pursue its BRI projects, forging ahead with a bold move in geopolitics in order to build and strengthen cross-border trade routes (Baker McKenzie, 2021); while Japan persuades to FOIP for stimulating "regional stability" and "prosperity" by enhancing Asia-African interconnectivity (JMOD, 2021). BRI program is designed to substantially impact China's "political and economic relations" with the world including Southeast Asia, which incorporates vital investment and trade destinations along the BRI routes (Yan, 2018). In contrast, FOIP is considered as a geopolitical strategy aiming at forming a maritime alliance with QUAD partners to challenge Chinese strength and influence while Southeast Asia is perceived as a strategically vital region for creating "a stable, prosperous, and rule-based regional order' (Satake, 2019).…”